I was not capable of feeling the wind beneath me until
I was about nine years old.
This is how I remember the first time I ever rode my two wheel bike.
I do not remember feeling any fear or other anxieties that might have come along with a child first time of experiencing their first time of learning a new task.
I don’t even remember why I had received this beautiful two wheel bicycle, which seemed to big for me to maneuver. Usually the only time I received any gifts was on my birthday and at Christmas time.
I do remember standing at the top of our newly covered dirt driveway positioning my bike in just the right position for me to mount. This shiny new white bike ready for me to hike my short chubby leg over the bike’s main frame and ready for me to coast my way… all the way down the side of my house and circle around in my back yard.
I gave it very little thought about the pain that I was about to feel.
Oh the pain and fear I felt was so... intense as I rode down our long drive;
past our yard and straight into the tree, at the end of our backyard.
Oh the pain I felt from every part of my body that had had contact with the bike and the tree.
There was pain in place that I had never felt before pain in before.
The only thing that surpass the pain that I felt as my mom and dad where pulling the blackberry thorns and gravel from every part of my body was;
the wind that I felt.
the wind that that brought a small sense of freedom.
the sense of accomplishment.
You see because I had spent so much of my ear childhood in the children's hospital I had never been allowed outside because everyone in my realm were afraid that I was going to get sick. So I had gone beyond the expectation of what the social workers and doctors had said that I was capable of doing.
In three short years I had over come multiple barriers.
I had become “normal.”
I had become acceptable to my peers.